Spoon puppet Make your own!!!

Now that a new School year has started and a new office year as well :) I 'm afraid we would be spending even less time doing fun activities plus its getting very difficult to carve out time Mommy-Miral time between Quran class and home work and free play with friends not to forget Pokemon + kemonache  :) { yup guilty guilty} so I made a new {school} year resolution last week;" No matter what we will do one activity together on Friday, Promise " and I m gonna call it___ Well I dont know what!!!
so for our first " ___ well I don't know what" we made spoon puppets! have a look at our spoon family

 

Secret Messages on Eid ;D

This choti  Eid instead of starting the day with sawayaan ( vermicelli ) we started of with uncovering secret Eid messages 

I set up the morning table with the supplies including sheets with secret Eid messages. the trick is to write whatever u want to with a white candle

and told the lil ones to unveil their messages by painting over them with water colors 

well to my surprise it was easier for shefu to follow hahaha as all she does at this stage is Colooooooooorrrzch! and coolooorshz!! and coloorzch!!!

Miru's took a while to understand that its not about "drawing"or painting the way she usually does{ she is still in the princess phase} so it was tough for her to just Paint  the way she used to do 2 years ago, another proof "its hard to unlearn  :)

But once she got the first letter unveil she loved it so much that she wrote many many more one for everyone actually  ;)

More on the Arts-ee side

Well though its been 8 days since July is officially over there are a few over due posts/ updates. so I'll try to wrap them all in one :)

Make Ata{wheat flour dough} Birds

First of all in the month of Ramadan all our routine is off. Kids stay up all night till sehri time {I know it will freak some of my discipline inclined friends} Here is a sneak peek on what do they do around 3 Am.

with the inspiration coming from drawing books

 Then we do Painnnnnnnnntsss { well never this late} , recently M tried her hands on blow painting for the first time...and it was ...well frustrating--- until we got the wobbly eyes on!!

While Shefu the destroyer dribbled the fabric and acrylic paints all over the sheets

Easy Fossil Making for Kids

 The second activity that was initiated by "did dinosaurs have feathers" is the fossil making, that again was based on the easy technique of making a plaster cast but was a lot of fun for all three of us. The catch again was to introduce her to a little bit of science and history while building on new vocabulary. The simple molding casting activity gave us plenty of time to discuss about the earth; its layers and how it was formed, lava and volcanoes, Fossils; what are they?, how were they made? different kind of feathers and why it was difficult to find nay feathers from dinosaur time? She can never get tiered of the story of the big bang! And it is not boring at all. Especially when u see it from a 6 years old's imaginative perspective. The lava eruption could be caused by the 'thumping' of dinosaurs on yet soft earth!! We were just using our 'logical brains' and contemplating different theories { all our own, of course}
Here are the "Fossils" we dug up :)

and Here is the Process

smooth a thic layer of modeling clay in disposable container

take the objects out carefully

Mix plaster of Paris in water, making a thin even paste

pour it on the clay making quarter of an inch thick layer

leave overnight to dry/ harden

slip them out and remove the clay carefully

Tadaaaaaaa!!!

Dance Show and Spiders

two of her latest masterpieces

the first one is babies "Dancing in a dance show"

and this one is "a spider stuck in the spider web"

This lead to some serious thinking....I think I need to narrate the storeies with these drawings as in writing them on the same page or on back side her thoughts are as intriguing as the drawings themselves.

what do you say???

Marble Painting

M and I did our first marble painting today , yes it was my first ever as well !!! Its simple and fun and now I wonder why did I wait so long to do it ...May be because I was afraid that I wont be able to stop her using/messing up her hands and fingers without being strict to her and that sure is one thing I want to avoid as much as i can. But I also wanted to show her that there ARE DIFFERENT ways to do and enjoy. and I think we pretty much succeeded.
To do it I measure and cut a piece of paper that fits in our cookie sheet, place the paper in then M put the ball on it.(yes we didn't have the marble so I used a small ball and it worked ) then I poured some paint on the ball and gave the cookie sheet to M to shake and move around. kept pouring more color as required and the results .....ammm really nice.

Another Painting Session

While I was busy busy making and thinking about the eidi, Miral enjoyed another session of painting. She took all the liberty and painted herself from head to toe in paint ....she was making "body prints" LoLs

thats what we call free art :) Its just that I dont know whats her poor Art teacher gonna do this winter when she starts school.

Besides painting with hands, feet and brushes today she also enjoyed painting with her toy cars though we had a little phadda over using small nesting blocks or a rectangular plate to use as a pallet for the cars, she wanted to paint every thing including herself after all she got her hands on " paints" after a long long time...

pictures comming soon....

How Can I Forget ....

... to share this fabulous underwater scene drawn by M on our way to Hyederabad. I just love the way little ones draw things their way, the boldness and confidence of her strokes and I just Wish that she keeps this even after going to school, hate the way they teach them how to draw in the so called art class at schools; that just sucks the Individuality out of it... ammm more on that sometime later, don't want to spoil the beauty right now ;)

Hand Prints

Painting with hands ....and feet is our absolute fav. Here are some fun pics of my shrek :)

More on Art/Drawing

I don't know if its the next milestone or what but Now a days instead of drawing her complete focus is on COLORING. some time ago she used to ask one of us to draw something saying "wancho buttafly" "wancha cat" etc and then make one of her own Now when its drawn all she wants is to grab a crayon and Color color color. I love the efforts she puts to control her hand movement so that the color doesn't go beyond the lines .....though it still does :)

next one is one of her earliest attempts I colored the bird in this one to show her how but I Love what she did with the Dog

and very rarely we get this from her these days. Just check out that to make a "O face" smile she made another face in her mouth that's smiling . It sure is a long way from this to this and now the coloring

Paintingsssss

Yesterday M and I enjoyed painting on canvas.It was the first time that i introduced acrylics and canvas to her.She handled the medium pretty well it was very sweet that she arranged all the color tubes on mat while I was getting the other stuff ready. We started off with two 1x1 feet canvases I gave one to M and painted a green background on the other one. M just loves mixing things up so its was the same brush that went in each color and the same spot that was painted over and over in circles.I think she was fascinated by the mixing and the way it turned into a new color. Funny thing is that she can't resist water actually she tried to paint only with water so I had to remove it. Then came painting with her hands. What I initially intended were canvases with her hand prints one with her painted background as she has just turned 2 and another one with coconut tree for chicka chicka boom boom theme challenge and ended up with these which no doubt are even cuter. She is now obsessed with the idea of painting her hands and printing them

Birdie by M (drawn on 1st Dec.)

Life really is like a joy ride ever since we got her in our lives.No day has passed since her birth that she didn't surprise us by something utterly cute and undeniably intriguing, we were still fascinated by her portrait and here she is with her BIRDIE .... don't know what to say about this one but sure it is as cut as M herself !!! cant take my eyes off this cute thing with her small beak ( which reminds me of my sweetie's pout) and the open wing ! The best part is that she knew what she was drawing (the flag on the right is drawn by irfan i guess)

Crumpled Collage

I was planing to do a collage activity with M for quite some time now. I got the basic idea for this collage from Mellisa's Blog "chasing cheerios". Had bought the transparent sticker sheet weeks ago but last night when we finally get down to do it....

.....BOOOinGG !!! This is Our final product !!! :)

tried fixing the sticker sheet (sticky side up) on floor ....NO!

Irfan suggested hanging it up will add interest as it will bring her attention to the fact that things (tissue papers) are actually sticking to it and not falling down but..... NO!!!

She was more interested in the masking tape i used to fix the back of sticker sheet to fish tank :)and then all of a sudden she realises that the sheet is sticking IT EVEN STICKS TO MY HANDS!!!And all the other things in room so here it is OUR VERY FIRST CRUMPELED COLLAGE !!HeHe we'll sure try it in another few days .

From M's sketch book

Drawing is one activity that we do on daily basis right from the day M started holding a pencil (with her whole hand ofcourse) after a day or two we bought her chubby crayons, and to this day this is one activity that kept her interest for such a long long time (only Legos and books are in a close competition.....)She is ready to indulge in it at any time, any where

so here are a few glimpses from her sketchbook


lets start with the older ones
the first one that is on record :) from Jan 5 2008 when M was 11 months old This is the only one with date may be I was too excited and now its a norm :( i think i should still keep a record with dates and all Its fun looking back at the progress..... Nahi??

I encircled the tea stain on upper right corner so dont get too impressed :)

wow....... can see the grip and controll after a just few months practice

We still have to encourage her to use different colors , mostly she is contented with any one given color and starts chewing the other one !!!

hope u never loose ur interest!!!

happy Drawing Miral !!!

Finger Paints (25th July)

Last month we had 3 fun painting sessions, (these pics are from the 2nd one)we made the finger paints using the easiest recipe that I learned from some toddler site ( cant remember the name now but thanks to that site any way) for this Miral helped me mix plain flour with water and food colors (we just had red and green)Mixing was fun in its own and M was really delighted doing just that but we moved on once i showed her how we use it on paper. I stripped M to her diaper and we are all ready for the action!

This time we also invited a few friends to join us and they also enjoyed the finger paints

M's master strokes
these were "Finger" Paints but M liked using Brushes and Spoons for her painting and she can't keep herself to just that 20 x 30 inches sheet so she was all over the plastic sheet that was to protect the carpet.
curious that she never used the two colors together... soon we'll try again and see what happens this time .